


Transformers: Faction Failure

by PatchHap



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Action, Drama, Fighting, Gen, Robots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:13:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27279301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PatchHap/pseuds/PatchHap
Summary: When your Sargent leaves you for dead under a pile of rubble, what else is there to do but join the dark side. Besides, 'cons have more fun.------------------(This is the last time im renamingthis i promise )
Kudos: 1





	1. 42

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still playing with the title 
> 
> It's been a long time since I've written anything, so this is def rough and kinda rushed. I've never been good with descriptions either so forgive me. 
> 
> This takes place in no official Transformers canon and is just a Frankenstein's monster of different pieces of the official canons that I like and stuff I've made up on my own. IDK if I'll even finish this but enjoy it.

When you're born in the middle of a war, there isn't much time to figure stuff out before they weld a gun to your back and welcome you to the force.

When you stand up for the first time, take your first step, and are hurried into Bootcamp, you're not given much choice about what you're gonna do or who you're gonna be. For me, a massive bot with a deep voice introduced himself as Swingshot and told me I was 42-s-11, an auto bot, and pushed me into a vehicle.

Only hours after waking up for the first time I was surrounded by other equally confused bots. Some of us spent that ride looking at and flexing our hands, others attempted short conversations. As for me, I gawked at how much bigger and stronger the other bots looked compared to me.

I don't remember much from boot camp. The bigger bots were taught fighting and weapons. They were given guns and told how to use them. Their alt forms were massive, with all-terrain wheels and guns and missiles. I and a few of the other tiny bots were taught how to scout, how to scavenge for parts and bodies, and how to do small repairs  
.   
I was the fastest I think. That's why they used me to put the bigger bots through their paces. I lead, they followed. If they caught me they were rewarded. But nobody ever caught me. I was too fast, too agile, my vehicle form was a tiny car that could fit through most gaps and I wasn't held down by any turrets or extra armor. 

Only solarcycles after my birth, we were split into teams. One sergeant, one scout, and several warrior class bots. Swigshot was my sergeant, and I could tell he favored me over the others. It didn't help my standing with the warrior class, they already had a distaste for me for never slowing down so they could catch me and avoid extra drills.

"Why am I so different from the others?" I asked Swingshot as we marched through the wreckage of one of Cybertron's cities. 

"What do you mean? You're a scout, and our information bot," he told me.  
"But why don't I have guns?" I asked.

"Because you aren't built to fight 42, you were built to run. You hold all of our information," he stopped and grabbed my arm, he turned it over and pointed at the screen there. It showed the roster of bots with us, their health, a radar, our location. None of this was new information to me. I let the other bots pass us before I spoke.

"But why me?" I asked, almost in a whisper so the others didn't hear.

"You were chosen by the well of all sparks to be who you are," Swingshot said. "The matrix has plans for all of us, and fate has chosen you for this most important task." he dropped my arm, patted my head, and rejoined the group, now several yards ahead of us.

"Slag fate," I snarled under my breath. I walked slowly behind the others for a while. 

"42!" Swigshot called, "To the front, we're in unfamiliar territory! Valor, back him up."

I transformed and sped to the front, again several yards from the others. Valor followed. I transformed back and landed flat on my feet, but valor slapped my shoulder, causing me to stumble.

"What's up, Half-Piston?" He asked. 

Valor was much taller than me, he was Swingshot's second in command, and yet, he was only a single Stellercycle older than me. 

"Doing my job," I said after righting myself. I pushed forward.

Valor followed close behind me. "You know the Sargent only tells you you're important to protect your feelings. How important can you be if you aren't even big enough to carry a turret."

"I know," I said softly without looking at him. I could tell I caught him off guard with the comment. "I'm a glorified radar dish. I'm not even allowed to fight."

"You should think of it as a plus," Valor said. "We die our warrior's deaths, and you? You get to live to run another day."

I paused for a moment to let Valor catch up, and then with a quick motion, I kicked the back of his leg where a damaged servo connecting his foot was exposed. Valor tripped, cursed, and nearly fell. 

"I may be a coward by trade," I said, reaching out to steady the bigger bot, "But I know things."

Valor smirked, that seemed to win his respect for the moment and the remainder of the journey was uneventful. We made camp just outside the city under a natural overhang on a cliff. As the other bots shared Energon and chatted among themselves, I took my own ration and set up my own camp a few yards away on a hill, overlooking their camp but far enough away they wouldn't bother me. Valor followed. 

"What do you want?" I asked, sitting down with my back rested against the ruin of a building.   
"You could come join us," he said. I laughed. 

"You can't tease me one second and ask me to hang out the next," I took a sip of energon, "I'm not stupid." In my first several solarcycles of life, I had had enough teasing to last the rest of it. There was a reason I tended to rest alone.

"I was wrong about you being a coward," he said, but I stopped him. I had heard Swingshot dig into him about his comments earlier. I heard everything that came over the coms.

"Shove it," I told him, "Just tell Sarge I accepted your apology and move on. I'm not interested in making friends.'

"Fine," Valor growled and turned on his heel. I watched him go, well aware that if I had just shut up and took the apology I would have a friend. But I wasn't interested in friends. Why should I be close to any of these bots who teased me and treated me like scrape? Most of the bots from my protoform batch had names and friends already, but I had refused every one they tried to stick on me. Half piston, Speedy, Slippy, Lapdog. All of them had been mean or mean spirited, and I really wasn't interested in letting people who didn't like me choose who I was going to be.

I waited for the others to go into stasis for the night and replayed clips from the training exercises I had recorded. I didn't have any weapons, but I had my fists. 

I followed along as closely as I could, using rocks and bits of wreckage as punching bags. If nobody was going to help me get stronger, I would do it myself. 

"I choose my own path," I said to nobody, kicking a rock so hard it crumbled into a few pieces. I smiled to myself. and then I heard something. Voices. I looked towards my sleeping platoon and realized it had to be someone else. I hid behind a boulder as a couple of bots approached my sleeping crew. I tensed. Decepticons. 

I prepared to set off the alarms and wake my crew, but I paused. There were only two of them. I looked toward the rocks I had broken, and before I could stop myself I charged them. From where I was standing, they looked to be my size, but as I drew nearer, I realized even the smaller of the two was twice my size. I used a rock to propel myself up towards them, it was too late to stop now and-

The smaller bot yanked me out of the air by my neck. He laughed. "A scrappy little scout, aren't you?" He chuckled. I thrashed my legs and set off the alarm, but my team was already awake. With a few short blasts, I was dropped. The bigger con fell and the one who held me limped a few yards before transforming and flying off. I coughed a few times and looked at the ground. 

"Why didn't you wake us, 42?" Swingshot asked. "Why didn't you run?"

I didn't say anything. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him turn to look at my camp. I kept my eyes trained on the ground. Swingshot grabbed me by the back and carried me unceremoniously back to camp and dumped me in the center. 

"Half Piston nearly got us killed!" Snarled Valor. "He broke orders by attempting to attack."

I stayed quiet. 

Swingshot looked down at me, and then back to the crew of bots I had failed. "You get one warning, Half Pison," he told me. "For now on you stay with us when we camp, and if you ever charge an enemy like that, ever again, I will let you. I promise you have no chance ever taking a 'con head-on. Your orders are to alert and run. Got it?"

"Yes sir," I spat.

The next morning I again led the crew. Valor at my heels making smug remarks. 

"Half Pison is a good name for you." he cooed. “Cause I don't think that brain of yours is running on all cylinders.”

"That's not my name," I snapped, my fists tightening. 

"Oh lighten up," Valor said, "Every bot earns his name somehow, just accept it."

I spun on my heel to face him. "I haven't earned my name yet! I refuse to be called a dimwit for the rest of my life!" Valor stood toe to toe with me. “Why should I let bots who never like me tell me who I’m supposed to be?!”

"You're gonna go through life," he said, stooping to be face to face with me, "Thinking bots don't like you because you're weak, or small, or useless. But that's not the reason we don't like you. It's because you're a pile of scrap that doesn't know compromise, teamwork, or how to have a decent conversation with anyone. You're a mean little junk breathed bot who thinks he's tough shit because he can run fast. And I hope to the spark a Decepticon puts you in your place so we can get a scout who knows how to do his job and not complain."

There were a million things I could have said or done, but Swingshot was catching up. I bit back a remark, loosened my fists, and turned around to continue doing my job. Except, instead of rubble and boulders, standing in front of me was a Decepticon. 

Valor shot and I could hear the rest of my team transform and speed to our aid, but before I could even transform there was a hand around my neck and I was brought face to face with the bot from the night before. 

"It's my scrappy little scout," he cooed softly. 

"L-Let me go," I begged as bravely as I could.

I was suddenly airborne. I landed with a crash and turned to see Swingshot had barreled into the Decepticon who had captured me and the two were now locked in combat. 

You need to run and get help, I thought to myself as a dozen more cons feel from the sky. I struggled to my feet but was knocked flat on my back once more by a blast from a con. Two of them cornered me, their cannons trained on my head.

"There's too many! Fall back!" Swingshot gave the order, throwing the con he had been fighting. He looked towards me, our eyes locked. He fired off two blasts and missed the cons who had me cornered. 

Valor paused his retreat as he passed by Swingshot. He looked from him to me, to where the two missed shots had hit a weak point in the building I was cornered against.

"He's as good as slag." I heard over the coms as the building crumbled and landed on me and several of the cons. As the debris fell around me I watched my team abandon me, before the world went dark.


	2. The birth Of Slagslayer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been so long since I've written anything so IDK if this is goo to bad or what. This chapter is kinda long and nothing really happens.

When I awoke the wreckage was being pulled off of me and my hands were locked in stasis cuffs. I wouldn't have fought it anyway, not only was I badly damaged, but I had nowhere to go. Like spark was I going to chase after Swingshot after what he had done to me. 

The tall robot who had captured me was still alive. He brushed bits of rock and stone off of himself and turned to look at me. Two big cons were holding me, one on each arm. I was leaning heavily on one of them. 

"Well well well. If it isn't my scrappy little scout." He purred, using one finger to tip my head up towards him. My neck was damaged and the movement hurt like scrap. 

"Go ahead and kill me," I told him. "I'm as good as dead to those guys anyway."

The tall con laughed. He moved his finger and my head slumped once more, my neck unable to hold it up under my own power. "They'll come for you," he said. "You have too much of their valuable information." 

"Ha. They'll just delete my drive via my comlink," I said, "once they realize I'm still online that is."

The con opened my chest plate and rooted around for a bit before ripping out a few wires. It stung. I flinched. The con slammed my chest closed once more. "You're quite useful." He purred. 

I let out a pained laugh. "First time I've heard that one." 

"What else can you tell me, autobot?" The con asked, using one massive hand to cradle my entire head so I could look him in the eye.

"What would you like to know?" 

  
  


I think my "cell" was relatively cozy all things considered. 

There were a cot and four walls that kept me out of the elements, which frankly was better than I had ever had. It was like having a bunk room all to myself. No noisy warrior class bots to keep me up at night or to tease me. And on top of that, the cons were treating me well. 

It had been a few solarcycles since my capture, and I had sung like a bird the entire time. I told them the location of my base, my commander’s names, weapons... Everything I knew was heirs if they asked. This seemed to please Motorburner quite a bit, given he was the commander of this particular platoon.

Motorburner seemed to like me. But then again. I was giving him valuable information on my home base. I felt like my use to him and the other cons ran out the second my information did, but I enjoyed my time anyway. After my capture, they patched me up, got me functional again, and buffed out a few dents too. I felt great, well-rested, and had all the energon I could ever need. All I had to do was dish out info on bots I never even liked. At the very least I could enjoy some luxury before my spark was extinguished.

But still. I waited to see if they would come back for me. I watched the window and waited for them to follow my distress beacon. But just as I thought, they probably sent the order for my information drive to be wiped and left me for dead. They couldn't have known I told Motorburner to take my coms out, but why would they leave me behind if there was a chance I was still alive.

I was purely disposable to them. 

_Come on, they didn't like you anyway,_ I thought to myself. _Swingshot tried to kill you. You were collateral damage to him._

I had to agree with myself. The guy was almost always right. 

"How's my favorite patient?" 

I turned to face the docbot, Fizzle, as he entered my cell.

"Pretty good," I replied, moving my shoulders, "I still feel like my neck is stiff." 

Fizzle said nothing, just got to work on my neck. 

"So, is motormouth planning on having a chat with me today?" I asked. Fizzle nodded before spinning my head to face the wall, it sent a jolt of pain down my spine.

"He wanted me to make sure you were at your best," Fizzle informed me.

"Oh boy maybe he's asking me to go steady," I teased. Fizzle laughed and snapped my head straight once again. I rolled my head, now completely pain-free. The neck injury had been an old one, I never could get the medics back home to fix it. They always told me it was too minor an injury and didn’t alter my performance so they refused to “waste” Resources fixing it

“I feel like a brand new bot, thanks Fizzle," I said. 

"Never thought I'd say this to an autobot, but the pleasure is all mine," he said, packing up his tool kit. "Anything else?"

“I hope my favorite little songbird is well.” Motorburner interrupted us.

I looked up as he entered the room, Fizzle slipping out behind him. 

“Much better now, chief,” I replied.

Motor said nothing, just flipped open my chest plate, and disabled my emergency beacon. "I could have done that," I said, shortly before he ripped the beacon drive out and stepped on it. I flinched. "You gotta stop ripping scrapes out of me like that. Fizzle was like right there."

"Your autobot friends can still track you as long as you have your beacon, even if the alarm isn't sounded. And I've given up on them coming here to look for you, might as well keep the location of our base a secret," Motorburner looked out the window at the barren landscape outside.

He crossed my room to sit on my cot, I joined him. "What… is it we're fighting for anyway?" I asked. The autobots had never gone fully into detail, and after several solarcycles with Motorburner, I trusted him to tell me the truth.

"Equality, at first anyway," Motorburner sighed. "The autobots used our kind for slave labor for millions of years. Mind you we didn't have a name for ourselves back then, but bigger bots were targeted for hard labor. We were given no choice but to work away in the mines, fight as gladiators for sport, or die as soldiers. We weren't given the choice the smarter, smaller, more attractive bots were given. We were told the spark chose us all for our jobs, that the matrix knew more than any bot could. A heap of rubbish." 

"The autobots didn't want equality?" I asked. Motorburner shook his head. 

"The autobots wouldn't rest until each and every decepticon is dead. Not only do they not want equality, but they also crave genocide. They know that now, there isn’t a decepticon alive who would go back to the way things were, so their answer is to get rid of every single one of us." 

I looked down at the screen on my arm. "You were chosen by the spark for this task." Repeated over and over in my head. Now what I had always felt was true was confirmed. Autobots didn’t give a scrap about fate. They only cared for power and for their natural order to be restored.

"Motorburner… is it possible for me to join the decepticons?" I asked finally. 

Motorburner smiled, placed a hand on my shoulder, and said "I thought you'd never ask." 

  
  


"What are we supposed to do with this?" The other cons glared at me, some gave Motorburner questioning looks. I stood beside him and smiled, eager for my new life as a con to begin.

"This," Motorburner reached over and hooked his hand under the metal plating on my back, he lifted me practically over his head for all the cons in the room to see. "Is our new autobot information expert. He's in charge of intercepting and decoding transmissions from the enemy."

My face fell. I struggled in his grip a bit but didn't say anything. My chest was heavy with disappointment, an information bot? Again? When would I get a choice on who I was gonna become?

"What's his name?" Someone in the crowd asked. 

Motorburner made a "hm" sound and turned me to face him. 

"What is your name, Kid?"

Half Piston played on my lips, after all, that’s what my old team had taken to calling me. I shook it out of my head, getting an odd look from Motorburner. That wasn't who I was gonna be. I get to decide who I'm gonna be. 

"Slagslayer!" I announced. I had no idea where the name came from, but I liked it. The cons erupted into laughter. 

"Are you sure that's the name you're gonna go with?" Motorburner bit back a laugh. I rolled my eyes. 

Motorburner must have seen I was being serious and composed himself. He held me up again for the other cons to see. "SLAGSLAYER THE AUTOBOT TRAITOR!" The cons laughed and cheered, and for the first time in my life, I felt like I belonged somewhere. 

After the meeting, Motorburner sat me down on the ground gently and started to walk away. I stopped him. 

"I wanna fight!" I told him. He gave me a puzzled look. 

"You will, Slagslayer, you will," he said.

"But you said I was an informant con," I said. 

He laughed a bit. "The reason we're on top and the autobots are fighting for scraps of energon in no-bots-land is because we teach everyone, from the smallest spy bot to the biggest constructicon, how to fight." 

I felt immediate relief. 

"But," he continued. 

"But?" I asked, slightly scared. 

"You need some weapons."

  
  


Fizzle made a puzzled face, looked me up and down, and back at the weapons he had. Guns. Torrents. Missles. You name it he had it. But he seemed lost.

"Something wrong, doc?" I asked. Fizzle looked at me. 

"Shoulder mouthed guns are your best bet, but your arms are so tiny…." He trailed off. "I don't have much, just spare parts and scrap from the battlefield."

I glanced at the pile of weapons, and then to the several hulls of various bots that were strung up around Fizzle's operating room. 

"Then maybe…" I said, a plan coming into form, "I need bigger arms."

Fizzle's face lit up and we both seemed drawn to the same bot hanging by the arms behind us. It was just a torso, but the arms and chest plat were in good shape, and they were just big enough to fit me without replacing everything else. 

But. Of course. Everything else would need replacing. Eventually. 

  
  
  


"Fizzle said to be gentle, he's recovering from surgery." Fuse was a bot slightly taller than me who was in charge of training. He turned to face my sparring partner, Wapper, who was much much bigger than me. "So I want you to kick the scrape outta him."

I huffed. My arms and chest were a bit sore and clumsy from my surgery, and the extra weight wasn't something I was planning for, but these arms were huge and strong and I was dying to try some real fighting.

But of course, rushing my opponent wasn’t a good idea. I tripped, landed flat on my face, and got my faceplate kicked in. 

  
  


"What in the name of all sparks happened to your faceplate???" Fizzle asked. 

I looked from Fuse to Wapper, and back to the ground. "Well," I said, "I guess I didn't see him coming." One of my optics had been broken, I thought it was hilarious. Fizzle did not. 

I guess my constant need for medical care and replacement parts during my first months of training turned Fizzle into something of a mad scientist, and I was his faithful guinea pig. I never knew what I had in store once he put me under but I was always excited to see myself once I woke up. 

After getting another broken optic, I joked I needed a few more as back up. When I woke up, I realized I had four of them. I could switch my sight from one set to the other or use both sets for a wide-angle. 

After talking myself into a beating that landed me with a broken jaw, I woke up to find the doc had given me a second mouth. He didn't have an explanation for that one, but given my tendency to talk too much and get hurt, I think he felt it was necessary to warn bots with a glance that I was a motor mouth. 

Over time, I probably could have constructed a second bot out of the parts that Fizzle had taken off of me. Every scrap of metal that made up Half Piston the autobot now sat in a pile in Fizzle's lab, and after a few solarcycles, I was finally, fully, Slagslayer the decepticon.

The cons on Motorburner’s team tended to lean towards respecting me as long as I had my mouth shut, but the cons who were just passing through tended to call me a freak or stare in confusion at my face or my mismatched limbs. My usual course of action was to get into another fight, but Motorburner quickly tired of breaking them up.

"You've been with us for a while now, Slagslayer, but so far all you've done is wander around the base, get into trouble, and let Fizzle run his mad scientist experiments on you," Motorburner said one day as Fizzle welded me up after a fight.

"I've done my fair share of message decoding too," I reminded him. 

"It's thankless work, Slag," Motorburner said. "What I'm getting at is you need to make a name for yourself. Earn some respect."

I perked up. "Are you gonna send me on a mission?!" I asked, excitedly jumping from the examination table. Motorburner nodded. 

  
  
  



	3. An old friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slagslayer goes on his first real mission with the decepticons

The mission was simple, sneak into the ruins of an autobot base, download the contents of a crashed ship's database, get out. 

The ship had gone down recently, but how recently we didn't know. My big fear was the database had already been wiped or that there were guards. I expressed my concerns with Motorburner who asked me if I was getting cold servos about my first real mission.

"I just know the autobots," I told him, " They don't leave information like that out in the open."

"If you don't wanna go, just say so, Slagslayer," Motherburner said. 

"I'm not saying I don't wanna go, I'm just wondering about the risks vs reward here," I said.

"It's not your job to speculate on the risks, Slag, it's your job to do what you're told to do by a commanding officer," Motorburner said. 

I opened my mouths to say something else but closed them again. "Yes sir."

"Good bot," Motorburner said, patting me on the shoulder. "Be prepared to move out in a few hours’ time.

It was me and Fuse on this mission. 

Fuse was a slender bot, slightly taller than me even with my mods to make me bigger, he was fast, agile, and good at fighting. I was one of those things. With all my mods to make me bigger and stronger, my once small, agile, body became clumsy and slow. I didn't miss it, yet Fuse didn't see a problem with teasing me for it. 

Like I had predicted, there were a couple of bots guarding the downed ship, and scans indicated the energy signal of a few more inside, though their sparks were weak and I assumed they had been injured in the crash.

"Scrape," Fuse cursed under his breath, "What do we do now?"

I ran over a few different options. "The energy signals inside are weak," I said, "We could draw the bots outside away, take them out, and get inside and take out the injured bots."

"Are they injured or just in stasis," Fuse asked, "If they're just down for a recharge their energy signals can appear weak."

Scrap, hadn't thought of that.

"We could go in, guns blazing," I suggested, turning to Fuse for his input, he shook his head. 

"We could damage the ship, if there are bots still here it has to be holding something valuable, supplies at least, we can't risk losing that."

"But we aren't here for supplies," I pointed out. "We're here for information, supllies would be nice but it would just be a bonus."

The two of us ducked behind our cover once more. We both knew we hadn't come prepared for a fight. I scanned our surroundings, considered calling Moorburner to send back up, and that’s when I spotted the autobot emblem sitting in the dust.

.................................

  
  


"Howdy!" I pushed Fuse ahead of me, pinning both of his arms behind his back.

The two bots guarding the ship pointed their weapons at me, when they saw the autobot emblem on my chest they lowered their weapons. "Who are you?!" he asked. 

"I'm Half Piston," I replied. 

"Whos your commander??" One of them asked.

"I don't have a commander," I responded, "I work on my own, but I found this decepticon creeping around you’re base and figured you guys wanted to know about it.

The ship's doors swung open with a loud hiss. 

"Half piston is dead," It was Valor. A bit worse for wear, but I knew his face when I saw it.

"Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated," I replied. "How's it going, Valor?"

He scanned me for a long while, "You look... Different Half Piston," he said, his voice was cautious. 

"Well, when a building falls on you sometimes a few parts have to be replaced," I explained. 

"Crank, Gunsmoke, take this Decepticon prisoner to the holding cell," Valor commanded. Fuse gave me a look that begged that I knew what I was doing. I absolutely didn't, but I hope the look I returned to him put him at ease.

Valor motioned for me to follow him in the opposite direction of Crank, Gunsmoke, and Fuse. I looked after them. "They aren't gonna do anything to him, are they?"

Valor gave me a look that was hard to decipher. "Why?"

I punched the palm of my hand. "Well, I caught him, I'd like to take the deceticreep out myself." I prayed he'd drop it.

"WE don't have the botpower to hold onto him," Valor said after a hot second. "You can kill him, or take him for a reward, but he can't stay here."

Fuse was safe, check. 

Valor suddenly stopped and turned on his heel. He was still a bit taller than me, not by much but it still made me feel small.

"You said you had parts replaced, by who?" he asked. 

I gave him a look of mock surprise. "The cons," I admitted, "At first they just wanted me to talk, but when I refused their docbot used me for his experiments. They tried to turn me against the autobots but I refused." 

"Why didn't you come to find us?" Valor asked. 

"You guys dropped a building on me and left me for dead," I said. 

"WE thought you WERE dead, Half Piston," Valor told me, "Motorburner did a number on you."

"My beacon went off for days, you guys never thought to check it out?" I asked.

Valor sighed. "As I said, we thought you were dead," he admitted, "Swingshot sent the signal to erase your memory banks and everything. We assumed the beacon was some kind of Decepticon trap."well-liked

I rolled my eyes.

"Listen you weren't well-liked anyway," Valor snapped. "It was your fault they were able to track us down, if you had done your job that night we could have taken Motorburner down and they wouldn't have found us, and you-"

"Would still be a measly little information bot?" I asked. I took the lead. "I'm better off where I am now."

Valor laughed. "Hunting cons in no bot's land?"

"And what mess have you gotten yourself into?" I asked, peering over my shoulder at him. I stopped and looked into the room to my right. There were three bots in varying stages of disrepair, the least damaged of them seemed to be taking care of the other two, but it seemed he was in over his head. He glanced at me and Valor, but Valor reached over and pressed the button to close the door before anyone could say anything. 

"We're on the losing end of a war, Half Piston," Valor sighed. "Scrap went tail up after you... disappeared. Swingshot was killed, I was promoted," He closed his eyes tightly. "I don't have an idea of what I'm doing. My bots keep getting killed and the ones I can find to replace them are young, inexperienced, or damaged." 

"You want me to join up with you, don't you?" I asked.

"We could really use another strong bot on the team," he admitted. "I could use a second in command with your kind of experience."

It seemed I had a choice.

Continue down my traitorous path, or backtrack. Rejoin the bots who brought me into this world. 

"Sure," I said, turning to place a hand on Valor's shoulder. "Let me take a look at the ship's data, get myself up to speed on a few things."

Valor seemed relieved and lead me to the control panel. For a few hours, I poured over data, caught up with Valor, and exchanged stories. Mine of course largely edited for my audience.

After a while, Valor placed a hand on my shoulder. "You know, my gut instinct was that you defected to the Decepticon side, but I'm glad I was wrong. You're a great bot, Half Piston."

I smiled, picked up the device I was using to store data, and placed my hand on Valor's shoulder as well. "You should have stuck to your gut, buddy," I told him. I looked to the doorway as Fuse entered the room, his body covered in spilled energon. 

Valor's face was an unreadable mix of emotions, mostly negative. I aimed my shoulder rays straight at his chest, missed my target, and severed his head clean off his body. I yanked it out of the air before it could fall and watched his body clank to the ground. 

"Neat!" I said, holding up Valor's head to look at it. "I think I'm gonna keep this!"

I smiled at Fuse who rolled his eyes. "Do you have what we came here for?" he asked. 

I nodded. "Let's get out of here before more bots show up."

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading, leave any comments, criticisms, curses, etc in the comment box and a Kudo wouldn't hurt.


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